Hazelburn Society 16-Year Old Ruby Port Whisky Review!

A port cask matured Hazelburn bottled in 2023 for the Springbank Society. Interestingly it was matured for 13-years in refill port casks before a 3-year secondary maturation in first-fill port casks. My first port cask Hazelburn, and it should make for a great Christmas Eve dram! 

Hazelburn is Springbank's unpeated single malt which is triple-distilled, as opposed to the standard Springbank which is lightly peated and distilled 2.5-times, and the heavily peated Longrow which is double-distilled. Both Hazelburn and Longrow respectively only make up 10% of Springbank's annual production, which is already a small amount that is nowhere near enough. Despite the relative scarcity neither seem to attract the flippers and hoarders as much as the distillery's namesake single malt does, which is a good thing! Believe it or not this ignorance also applies to rarities like cage bottles and Springbank Society bottlings of Longrow & Hazelburn, which are much rarer but seem to fly under the radar in comparison. The Springbank Society has been around for decades, essentially it's the inner circle for fans of the distillery. Unlike similar programs such as the Ardbeg Committee or the Friends of Laphroaig which are now nothing more than mailing lists and loyalty programs, members of the Springbank Society are offered bottlings that are actually exclusive and actually limited. Membership is required to purchase Society bottlings and they're only offered by the distillery itself, and membership isn't as easy to obtain as you may think - aside from paying a joining fee, due to massive demand the distillery closed the Society to new members a few years ago. There's no news on when, or even if, it'll be reopening. Unless you were lucky enough to get in on the action before this closure, your only real method of purchasing a Society bottling is to visit the secondary whisky auctions or other secondary sellers. You could argue that the distillery waited too long to stop accepting new Society members, and given the stock constraints that they are still dealing with there's essentially no point in re-opening that door anytime soon. Even now Society members need to be very quick to buy one of these exclusive bottlings straight from the source. 

There have been around 35-40 Society bottlings to date, and I've been lucky enough to taste a few examples, including one or two Longrows and Hazelburns. As you'd expect from Springbank these limited releases are often matured in an unusual cask type or bottled at an unusual age - two recent Springbank Society bottlings have been just 5-years old, one ex-bourbon cask and one ex-sherry cask. In the distant past Society releases were single cask bottlings, which changed to small batch releases of 2-5 casks vatted together, and the more recent examples have been larger at the 2,000-ish bottle mark. They're mostly cask strength as you'd expect, and are always in a fairly non-descript plain bottle with plain labelling and packaging. This particular Springbank Society Hazelburn is a 16-year old that was distilled in June 2007 and bottled in September 2023 at a cask strength of 50.8% ABV. Thanks to the 350ml bottle size there were 1,610 bottles released - it makes much more sense to do that than to release 800 x 700ml bottles, right? I haven't been able to find an exact retail price on original release, but word is they were around £50, which sounds about right. Secondary pricing is of course higher, but not as high as it would've been if these were 700ml bottles and if there'd been half the amount of bottles released. I think the 350ml bottles are a great move for Springbank Society bottlings, since the smaller bottles encourage opening & enjoying rather than flipping or hoarding. 

Port cask Springbanks tend to be very popular, probably because it's an unusual cask type in Campbeltown whisky and is still a less-common cask type in Scotch whisky overall. Personally in terms of official bottlings I've only had one Springbank and one Longrow example to date, so I can't really comment on the wider merits of port cask Springbanks. I will say though that the Springbank example I've had from the old brown label cask finished series was delicious, while the Longrow example, the 11-year old port cask from the 'Red' series of wine-heavy Longrows, was OK but not great. The Longrow Red series has now been discontinued and is due to be replaced by a 100 Proof (UK Proof, 57.1% ABV) series, which is great news if you ask me since the "Reds" tended to be far too heavy on the wine influence. Despite Longrow being quite a robust spirit on paper it struggled to hold up to most of those wine casks, even when a relatively short finishing period was involved. Being triple distilled and unpeated, Hazelburn is of course much lighter than the heavily peated Longrow, so it'll be interesting to see how this example holds up to what is certainly a heavy port cask influence - as stated above, it was matured in refill port casks for 13-years and then finished in first-fill Ruby port casks for the following 3-years. I've liked most of the Oloroso sherry cask Hazelburns that I've tasted to date and loved the 2022 15-year old in particular, which certainly wasn't light on the cask influence but maintained a great overall balance. Oloroso sherry (dry) and port (sweet) are very different from each other though, particularly Ruby port which is younger and sweeter compared to the Tawny port casks which we see more of in the whisky world. That's because most Ruby port doesn't spend much - if any - time in wood, tending to be stored/aged in stainless steel or concrete tanks instead, so we can assume that the Ruby port aged in these casks was of good quality. The sample for this review came from a generous fellow whisky lover. Let's get to it!

Springbank Society Hazelburn 16-year old, 50.8%. Campbeltown, Scotland.

Distilled 6/2007, bottled 9/2023. Matured in refill port casks for 13-years, finished in first-fill Ruby port casks for 3-years. Non-chill filtered, natural colour. 1,610 x 350ml bottles. 

Colour: Dark red with pink tinges. 

Nose: Rich, jammy, lightly floral. Bit of a nose prickle too. Musty red grapes, damp old wood, new leather, and red fruit jams - strawberry, raspberry, and plum. Hints of Turkish delight (rosewater) and sweeter orange peel. Becomes spicy & herbal with more time, cinnamon, black tea leaves, dried sage & rosemary. Not overly sweet so far. 

Texture: Medium-heavy weight. Rich and fruity, but nowhere near as sweet as I'd feared. Quite dry and spicy in fact. Slight heat. 

Taste: Fruity & rich. Red grape must again, and more leather. Raspberry, strawberry, and plum jams. Wood spices, black tea leaves, dried rosemary & sage. Bitter dark chocolate truffles coated with cinnamon. 

Finish: Medium length. Drying and astringent with leather & black tea leaves, wood spices, and dried herbs. Dried raspberries and more bitter dark chocolate.

Score: 3 out of 5. 

Notes: I know that seems like a low score for a Springbank Society bottling, but this one is always going to come down to personal preference. I can see it being quite divisive. While it's very much cask dominated, rather than overly sweet it's instead surprisingly dry, spicy, and tannic. I don't mind dry whiskies and don't mind some mild tannins in those whiskies, but like the recent 11-year old Longrow Red mentioned above, there's still too much cask influence here for my personal tastes. The Hazelburn spirit has been completely overwhelmed, even more so than the aforementioned Longrow was - which is no surprise. But while the Longrow was overly sweet and floral, this Hazelburn is almost the opposite, dry, spicy, astringent, and tannic. That could be because the Longrow was Tawny port casks and this is Ruby port casks, but Ruby port is generally the sweetest variety in port wine, so I can't be sure. 

I'd say that port cask lovers would find this one fascinating, and it's still a tasty Hazelburn. I just would've preferred that they left it in those refill port casks rather than giving it a secondary maturation in first-fill port casks. One of the best Longrows I've ever tasted was a Cadenhead's refill port cask, which still had some cask influence but really let the spirit shine. And that's exactly what I want to see when it comes to Campbeltown whiskies.

Cheers!